Bill McKibben: Fracking Will Not Save Our Climate

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry

Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.

By Bill McKibben | March 23, 2016 | The Nation

Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.

There’s one greenhouse gas everyone knows about: carbon dioxide, which is what you get when you burn fossil fuels. We talk about a “price on carbon” or argue about a carbon tax; our leaders boast about modest “carbon reductions.” But in the last few weeks, CO₂’s nasty little brother has gotten some serious press. Meet methane, otherwise known as CH₄.

In February, Harvard researchers published an explosive paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data and ground observations, they concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities. Between 2002 and 2014, the data showed that US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere.

To the extent our leaders have cared about climate change, they’ve fixed on CO₂. Partly as a result, coal-fired power plants have begun to close across the country. They’ve been replaced mostly with ones that burn natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane. Because burning natural gas releases significantly less carbon dioxide than burning coal, CO₂ emissions have begun to trend slowly downward, allowing politicians to take a bow. But this new Harvard data, which comes on the heels of other aerial surveys showing big methane leakage, suggests that our new natural-gas infrastructure has been bleeding methane into the atmosphere in record quantities. And molecule for molecule, this unburned methane is much, much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

The EPA insisted this wasn’t happening, that methane was on the decline just like CO₂. But it turns out, as some scientists have been insisting for years, the EPA was wrong. Really wrong. This error is the rough equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange announcing tomorrow that the Dow Jones isn’t really at 17,000: Its computer program has been making a mistake, and your index fund actually stands at 11,000.

These leaks are big enough to wipe out a large share of the gains from the Obama administration’s work on climate change—all those closed coal mines and fuel-efficient cars. In fact, it’s even possible that America’s contribution to global warming increased during the Obama years. The methane story is utterly at odds with what we’ve been telling ourselves, not to mention what we’ve been telling the rest of the planet. It undercuts the promises we made at the climate talks in Paris. It’s a disaster—and one that seems set to spre2ad.

The Obama administration, to its credit, seems to be waking up to the problem. Over the winter, the EPA began to revise its methane calculations, and in early March, the United States reached an agreement with Canada to begin the arduous task of stanching some of the leaks from all that new gas infrastructure. But none of this gets to the core problem, which is the rapid spread of fracking. Carbon dioxide is driving the great warming of the planet, but CO₂ isn’t doing it alone. It’s time to take methane seriously.

To understand how we got here, it’s necessary to remember what a savior fracked natural gas looked like to many people, environmentalists included. As George W. Bush took hold of power in Washington, coal was ascendant, here and around the globe. Cheap and plentiful, it was most visibly underwriting the stunning growth of the economy in China, where, by some estimates, a new coal-fired power plant was opening every week. The coal boom didn’t just mean smoggy skies over Beijing; it meant the planet’s invisible cloud of carbon dioxide was growing faster than ever, and with it the certainty of dramatic global warming.

So lots of people thought it was great news when natural-gas wildcatters began rapidly expanding fracking in the last decade. Fracking involves exploding the sub-surface geology so that gas can leak out through newly opened pores; its refinement brought online new shale deposits across the continent—most notably the Marcellus Shale, stretching from West Virginia up into Pennsylvania and New York. The quantities of gas that geologists said might be available were so vast that they were measured in trillions of cubic feet and in centuries of supply.

The apparently happy fact was that when you burn natural gas, it releases half as much carbon dioxide as coal. A power plant that burned natural gas would therefore, or so the reasoning went, be half as bad for global warming as a power plant that burned coal. Natural gas was also cheap—so, from a politician’s point of view, fracking was a win-win situation. You could appease the environmentalists with their incessant yammering about climate change without having to run up the cost of electricity. It would be painless environmentalism, the equivalent of losing weight by cutting your hair.

Federal Jury Awards $4.2 Million to Families with Water Polluted by Gas Drilling

Two Dimock, Pa., families who declined a Marcellus Shale gas driller's offer in 2012 to settle their claims of water contamination were awarded $4.24 million Thursday by a federal jury.

The verdict in U.S. District Court in Scranton was a blow to Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., which had maintained that its drilling was not responsible for the elevated level of methane in the families' water wells.

The eight-member jury found that Cabot's drilling was negligent and created a nuisance for the families of Scott Ely and Monica Marta-Ely and Ray and Victoria Hubert. It awarded the Elys $2.75 million and the Huberts $1.49 million.

In 2009, more than 40 Dimock residents sued Cabot, claiming that the Houston gas producer's rush to drill the Marcellus Shale had polluted their wells.

All but the Elys and Huberts settled in 2012 after tests showed wells contained elevated levels of methane, but none of the chemicals associated with gas drilling.

Read more at Philly.com


Interview of the Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the Water Pollution Case

Cabot Oil & Gas company was found by a federal jury to be responsible for contaminating two couples’ wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Listen to Susan Arbetter interview Leslie Lewis and Elisabeth Radow, the co-counsels for the plaintiffs, about the case at the Capitol Pressroom online (advance the tape slider to 22:10 minutes to begin).

FRACKING NEWS

Excerpts from articles in the news:
 
NY high court rejects Dryden fracking suit revival

New York’s highest court rejected an attempt to revive the fight against the Town of Dryden and its fracking ban.

In a precedent-setting decision last June, the Court of Appeals ruled 5-2 that communities have the right to use local land-use authority to prohibit oil and gas operations within their borders.

On Thursday, the court denied a motion by the trustee for bankrupt Norse Energy to re-argue its case against the Town of Dryden.

Read more here.


More New Yorkers Oppose Fracking: Poll

A new poll conducted by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental activist group, shows 56 percent of New Yorkers oppose fracking in the state. The survey of 802 New Yorkers was conducted by a third-party research firm in late September.

A similar survey by Quinnipiac University in mid-August found that only 48 percent of voters opposed fracking.

Anti-fracking activists have redoubled their efforts in recent weeks, following Gov. Cuomo on the campaign trail in an attempt to have him take a stance on fracking before the election, but the governor has kept a steadfast ambivalence on the subject.

Read more here.

 
Report: New York Governor’s Office Altered And Delayed Fracking Study

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration edited and delayed a fracking study commissioned by the state, according to a review by Capital New York.

The New York news outlet reported Monday that the Cuomo administration had altered a report on the natural gas extraction technique commonly referred to as fracking. The report was commissioned in 2011 and was “going to result in a number of politically inconvenient conclusions” for the governor. A comparison of the original draft of the report, which was put together by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the final version, showed that some of the original descriptions and mentions of fracking-related health and environmental risks were “played down or removed.”

Read more here.


Duke researchers explore potential dangers of fracking

With North Carolina's ban on fracking set to expire next year, Duke researchers are looking into the potential dangers of the technique.

“We sampled hundreds of homes with private drinking water wells, and found that people living near shale gas wells are more likely to have methane, ethane, and propane, the components of natural gas, in their water,” said Robert Jackson, formerly of the Nicholas School of the Environment and now a professor of environment and energy at Stanford University.

“I think there’s a perception amongst some people in Raleigh that they don’t want to hear about problems that might occur,” Jackson said. “I think the Mining and Energy Commission was designed to establish rules to help drilling come to North Carolina, not to decide whether or not drilling should come to North Carolina. That discussion never really happened.”

Read more here.


Residents Harmed by Fracking Demand EPA Administrator Drink their Tainted Water
Want EPA to Reopen Investigation of Drinking Water Contamination By Fracking

WASHINGTON - Affected community members from Dimock, Pennsylvania, along with advocacy organizations, rallied outside of EPA Headquarters to demand that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy either re-open investigations into fracking’s impact on people and the environment, or drink frack water from Pennsylvania that her agency has told residents is safe.

The action came after a year of gathering over 250,000 petitions, thousands of calls, and dozens of events asking McCarthy to meet with them, following the Los Angeles Times story that revealed the Obama Administration had shut down the EPA fracking investigation that found their drinking water contamination linked to drilling and fracking operations.

“My water is brown and smells so bad it will make you nauseous, yet EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy tells me and my neighbors that this poison is safe to drink,” said Ray Kemble, a resident from Dimock, PA who was part of the EPA’s fracking-related water investigation in 2012. “To make matters worse, Gina McCarthy is promoting more and more fracking across the country, meaning my story will be shared by millions of Americans. This has to stop.”

Read more here.


Frackers are dumping toxic waste into California’s groundwater

California can officially add one more disaster to its rapidly growing list of water woes: The EPA just found that at least nine fracking sites throughout the state have been dumping billions of gallons of contaminated wastewater into its protected aquifers.

Not only do many of these aquifers supply drinking water to residents throughout the Central Valley, they’re also reaching dangerously low levels due to overuse, as many farmers rely on aquifers for irrigation and have been overpumping groundwater supplies as the drought carries on.

According to a letter sent to the EPA by the California State Water Resources Board, roughly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into aquifers throughout central California. The EPA ordered the report following contamination concerns after 11 fracking wastewater injection wells were shut down in July by state officials.

Read more here.


Michigan landfill operator suspends receipt of low-level radioactive waste

A Van Buren Township hazardous-waste landfill operator, slated to receive up to 36 tons of low-level radioactive waste from a Pennsylvania fracking company, announced Monday that it will suspend receipt of such materials from all oil and gas operations pending a review by the state.

The announcements follow an Aug. 19 Free Press report on plans by a Pennsylvania oil and gas development company, Range Resources, to ship radioactive fracking waste to Wayne Disposal. The sludge was rejected by landfills in western Pennsylvania and its shipment to a landfill in West Virginia was halted by the state and voluntarily discontinued by the company, as West Virginia reforms its laws for handling such waste.

Ohio and West Virginia, two states with more intensive fracking activity than Michigan, have changed regulations on how to store, treat, process and dispose of radioactive oil and gas drilling wastes. Pennsylvania also doesn’t allow the materials in its landfills. Each of the states leaves it to oil and gas developers to find a disposal site. As Ohio tightened its regulations, state officials listed the Wayne Disposal site in Van Buren Township as an option for Ohio drillers.

Read more here.

[Click image to enlarge]

Impacts of Air Pollution from Oil and Gas Drilling

Organizations Petition EPA to Protect Public Health from Oil and Gas Emissions Contributing to Harmful Ozone Pollution

Ground-level ozone or "smog" contributes to serious adverse health impacts, including decreased lung function and premature mortality, and it damages foliage.  Children, the elderly, Americans with existing lung and heart disease, and those active outside are especially vulnerable.

On December 19, 2012, a broad coalition of environmental, conservation and children’s health groups petitioned the EPA to take two actions that will provide important public health protections for communities impacted by oil and gas emissions that contribute to harmful ozone pollution:

• First, we respectfully urge EPA to require broad deployment of ozone air quality monitors in oil and natural gas development areas. Requiring the necessary air monitors will ensure that Americans have clear, transparent information about whether the air in their communities meets the nation's health-based air quality standards for ground-level ozone or "smog" pollution as oil and natural gas operations in their communities expands briskly.

• Second, we respectfully ask that EPA provide communities with tools to help reduce smog-forming pollution from oil and gas development by issuing control technology guidelines (“CTGs”) for oil and gas equipment. These clean air measures can be some of the single most cost-effective methods for reducing smog-forming pollution in areas that violate the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone as well as those areas seeking to attain and maintain the National Ambient Air Quality Standards under the Ozone Advance Program.

RED, Active Rigs (Sept. 2012); BLUE, Ozone Monitors; SHADED, Population Density.

The Press Release is here.  The Petition is here [PDF, 34 pages].



Energy experts say drilling can be made cleaner
Scientists are concerned about effects of emissions on climate change and health impacts of breathing smog, soot and other pollutants.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the Colorado mountains, a spike in air pollution has been linked to a boom in oil and gas drilling. About 800 miles away on the plains of north Texas, there's a drilling boom, too, but some air pollution levels have declined. Opponents of drilling point to Colorado and say it's dangerous. Companies point to Texas and say drilling is safe.

The answer appears to be that drilling can be safe or it can be dangerous. Industry practices, enforcement, geography and even snow cover can minimize or magnify air pollution problems.

Some environmentalists say if leaks and pollution can be minimized, the boom has benefits, since gas burns much cleaner than coal, emitting half the carbon dioxide.

Al Gore told The Associated Press that it's "not irresponsible" to look at gas as a short-term substitute for coal-fired electricity. But Gore added that the main component of gas, methane, is a more potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas than CO2. That means that if large quantities leak, the advantage over coal disappears, the former vice president said.

Prasad Kasibhatla, a professor of environmental chemistry at Duke University, said that controlling gas drilling pollution is "technically solvable" but requires close attention by regulators.

"One has to demonstrate that it is solved, and monitored," he said.

Link to the full report is here.

Activists and EPA Deliver Safe Water to Families with Wells Polluted after Gas Drilling

 EPA found toxic chemicals that pose health concerns

Residents of Dimock Pennsylvania were not warned of possible risks to their well water in 2008 when they were asked to lease their land for gas drilling and hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale.

Soon after Cabot Oil & Gas began drilling the gas wells in 2008, Dimock res­i­dents began expe­ri­enc­ing severe prob­lems with their well water. Water became yellow, cloudy and contained a flammable gas. The most attention-getting prob­lem hap­pened on New Years Day in 2009, when one water well exploded with great force, moving a concrete slab weighing thousands of pounds. The explosion was caused by high-level gas contamination, presumably ignited by a spark from the water pump. Fortunately, the damage occurred outside the home and there were no injuries. Several other water wells also exploded, and nine others were found with so much gas that one homeowner was told to open a window when taking a bath. Propublica reported on these stories, calling Dimock "ground-zero" for drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

Fif­teen fam­i­lies with con­t­a­m­i­nated well water filed a fed­eral law­suit against Cabot Oil & Gas in 2009. The com­pany insisted, without any evidence, that the methane in Dimock water wells occurred nat­u­rally through biological processes near the surface, like rotting plants (later, scientists identified shale gas as the contaminant). Under Gov. Ren­dell, the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) took action and fined Cabot for the gas migra­tion inci­dents, barred it from further drilling in the com­mu­nity, and ordered it to pay for a pipeline to bring­ safe drinking water to Dimock res­i­dents. Cabot did not put in a water pipeline, but agreed to pay for tem­po­rary water sup­plies, which involved bottled water and also truck deliveries of bulk water.

In May 2011, Dimock resident-turned-activist, Craig Sautner (photo below), told a crowd of about 200 at Corning West High School in New York, “I’ve been abused by the gas industry like you wouldn't believe” during his three-year ordeal.

Sautner holding a sample of his family's well water - AP

Mr. Sautner closed his remarks in New York’s Southern Tier with an ominous warning: “On the ride up here, I saw what beautiful country you have here. Don't let [the gas industry] ruin it on you.”

In January 2011, under administration of a new governor, Tom Cor­bett, Cabot Oil & Gas asked the DEP for approval to stop the water deliv­er­ies by the end of Novem­ber. Cabot installed water filters in the homes and said Dimock’s water was safe to drink. The DEP agreed to reverse its ear­lier rul­ings, deciding that Cabot had ful­filled the water agree­ment. Sautner and other residents said the filtered water is undrinkable. Still, as of December 1, 2011, Cabot cut off water delivery to the affected Dimock families.

For three years after 2008, the affected Dimock families lived without safe tap water from their wells. They were dependent on water from Cabot Oil & Gas, the shale-gas fracking company that polluted their well water. They now had no water.

Anti-fracking groups and concerned citizens from Pennsylvania and New York joined together to help get water to Dimock. On December 6th, 2011, clean, New York water was delivered to eleven families in Dimcok. Actor/activist Mark Ruffalo who lives in a Catskill region where land is leased for gas drilling, and a hydro-geologist representing Dimock residents in a lawsuit against Cabot, as well as others spoke at a rally outside the home of a Dimock resident. Below is a video of a news report on that event:

See another video of the rally here.

Subsequently, after prodding by Dimock residents and activists, federal environmental regulators reopened their investigation of Dimock water wells. A tanker of water from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arrived in Dimock on January 20, 2012. This will be a regular delivery to four homes as the EPA investigates the impact of natural gas drilling on Dimock's drinking water.

EPA toxicologist found four households’ well water contaminated with arsenic and other hazardous substances “at levels that present a public health concern” (data of Cabot and PADEP). Some of these “are not naturally found in the environment,” EPA officials said, and may have been released by drilling activities. Among the toxic substances found in the well water were:

• Arsenic, classified by the US government and World Health Organization as a known human carcinogen, an element sometimes found in “elevated concentrations” in groundwater because of drilling;
• Barium, a common constituent of drilling fluids; long-term ingestion at high levels can cause kidney damage;
• Phthalates, a synthetic plastic chemical and probable human carcinogen, according to EPA;
• Glycol compounds common in drilling fluids and associated with damage to kidneys, the nervous system, lungs, heart, testicular damage and anemia;
• Manganese, an naturally occurring element that can damage the nervous system at high levels;
• Phenol, found in some drilling fluids; at high levels can cause irregular heartbeat, liver damage and skin burns;
• Sodium, compounds found in some drilling fluids, at high levels can cause high blood pressure.

Federal officials said that although the investigation has not been completed, they have concluded, based on samplings to date (by Cabot and PADEP), that a “chronic health risk exists” for the wells in question.

The EPA will conduct its own sampling of 61 water wells in Dimock after reviewing data collected by the state, Cabot Oil & Gas and other firms raised concerns about groundwater contamination connected to Cabot's expansive drilling operations in the area.

The water deliveries were met by families and drilling critics rallying in support of the EPA's actions who accused state regulators of failing to help them and enabling bad practices by the industry. "The EPA's stated policy is to step in where states have failed to enforce," filmmaker Josh Fox said, "which means the state of Pennsylvania and Gov. Tom Corbett has failed in its obligation to protect the citizens of Pennsylvania."

Speaking About Climate Change...

"Climate change, in my humble opinion, is the most important issue that we face," said Chris Hayes, the intelligent and informed moderator of "Up with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC.

Panelists on last Saturday's broadcast were David Roberts, who writes on energy and climate at Grist.org, and also Michael Mann, climatologist and author of "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars".
 
Interesting discussion! Check out the Video here.
Note: Advance the video slider to 10:22 minutes where the climate discussion begins.

Chris Hayes cites the EPA website on Greenhouse Gas Emissions: ghgdata.epa.gov There you can find locations and data on emission sources, such as those in Tonawanda, NY below:

Scientists find Shale Gas in Drinking Water near Industrial Drilling Sites

First scientific study of its kind -- Gas industry refuses to share data
The gas industry justifies the benefits of extracting shale gas by drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in terms of providing energy, economic stimulation and jobs. Also, some landowners have benefited by earning income from gas leases and royalties.

However, other landowners claim that, subsequent to nearby drilling and fracking, their drinking-well water became contaminated by flammable gas. Gas industry representatives dismiss the claim that fracking might make drinking water flammable.

Lighting water on fire "is a parlor trick that really has nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing," said Jim Smith, a spokesman for the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York State in a Wall Street Journal report. Instead, he said, it's caused by naturally-occurring methane that gets into some water supplies regardless of whether there's nearby drilling.

Despite such gas industry claims, there was no scientific evidence as to whether or not contamination of drinking water with natural gas is linked to nearby drilling and fracking. But there is now.

Scientists at Duke University measured the dissolved gas levels in 60 drinking water wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling areas in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern NY state. In a paper published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they reported that water samples taken closest to the gas wells had an average of 17 times higher than the methane levels detected in water samples taken further from active drilling. The maximum level was 58 times higher (see graph, below). Methane is the major component of natural gas. The average methane level detected was in the range of "action levels for hazard mitigation" recommended by the U.S. Office of the Interior (graph, large gray rectangle), and many water wells had levels far above that range.

Methane in well water is both a safety and health hazard. The gas escapes from water at the tap, the shower head, the washing machine and into the air of homes, where it can become flammable and even explosive. Methane can also cause headaches, nausea, brain damage and, at very high levels, death by suffocation. Potentially dangerous levels of methane were found in well water near drilling sites in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Some Pennsylvania homeowners whose wells became contaminated after nearby drilling and fracking had demonstrated earlier that their well water contains flammable gas.

At recent presentations on shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing sponsored by the Geology Department at the University at Buffalo, some of which are now available online, several speakers representing the gas drilling industry stated emphatically that the ability to light well water on fire is due to biogenic methane, i.e., methane produced on the surface of the ground by bacteria (e.g. gas from swamps, bogs, rotting plants).

Industry representatives also claimed that flammable water is not due to thermogenic methane, i.e., methane produced deep underground in the shale millions of years ago from decomposition of buried organic matter at high temperature and pressure.

But neither of these gas industry claims are backed by scientific studies on the water wells in Pennsylvania. So which type of methane is responsible for the high concentrations in drinking-well water? Is it biogenic methane present at the surface, or thermogenic methane present deep underground in the shale?

Stimulus money flows to clean NY water

Last March, the NY State Environmental Facilities Corporation solicited projects to identify green infrastructure opportunities in need of funds. The selected projects were then submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for final approval. New York received $432 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and $86 million for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

Western New York recieved $9.8 million for innovative water quality projects through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The funds were awarded to 10 different projects through a new State initiative known as the Green Innovation Grant Program, which promotes sustainable, environmentally sensitive water infrastructure and technologies.

Monroe County, Jamestown, and Medina received the largest grants:

• $3.2 million to Monroe County for the construction of a highly visible and educational green roof on part of the plaza level of the Monroe County Civic Center.
• $2.55 million to the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities, Chautauqua County, for the upgrade of existing digesters at the wastewater treatment facility, restoring the bio-solids process to allow the facility to effectively use the methane gas from the sludge digesters for power generation.
• $1.7 million to the Village of Medina, Orleans County, for the installation of green infrastructure at the wastewater treatment facility to achieve greater energy efficiency, while creating renewable energy and managing stormwater. Green improvements include rainwater harvesting, a green roof, solar units, and energy-efficient lighting.
  

The report on the funding announcement from Gov. Paterson is here.

On August 31, the Governor announced $15.4 million in federal funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for three projects in Western NY:

• The Town of Caneadea in Allegany County will receive $8.3 million to support the planning, design and construction of a project to address various drinking water quality issues. Treatment will be constructed for the existing source. A new well source will also be provided to conform to current standards for supply capacity. The project also includes a new transmission main, replacement of aged water mains and the provision of public water to areas presently served by poor quality private wells.
• The Town of Erwin in Steuben County will receive $6.3 million to support the planning, design and construction of a drinking water supply interconnection with the Town of Erwin Morningside Heights Water District as a primary source of water. Funding will support the installation of a new storage tank, distribution system, a secondary/emergency interconnection to the existing Village of Painted Post water system, and the provision of public water to areas presently served by private wells of insufficient quality and/or quantity.
• Chaffee Water Works Company, Inc. in Erie County will receive $800,000 to support the planning, design and construction of the project, which will address drinking water quality issues and includes improvements to the existing well source, the addition of a new backup source, replacement of an existing storage tank, upgrades to the hydro-pneumatic system, automated treatment controls, tank level alarms, and the replacement of the aged inadequate distribution system.
  

The report on the funding announcement from Gov. Paterson is here.

In the NEWS 3/15

Methane Gas and Global Climate Change
International experts are alarmed. Methane release due to thawing permafrost in the Arctic can enter the atmosphere and cause abrupt changes in the climate that would likely be irreversible.

Methane has more than 20 times the heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide. As warmer air thaws Arctic soils, the methane that could be released from beneath Siberian lakes alone, would amount to 10 times the amount currently in the atmosphere. Read the story at BuffaloNews.com and see a brief video of methane fire on Arctic ice here

Hopes [and Fears] rise for Coal Plant in Jamestown
The economic stimulus package includes $800 million for the Department of Energy’s funding of 'clean' coal projects. Supporters of the Jamestown project think this increases the chance that the project will be able to get the funding it needs to get started.

Others, including Walter Simpson, doubt that it makes economic and environmental sense to build a coal-fired power plant that developers hope will ease global warming by capturing its carbon dioxide emissions and storing it safely and securely more than a mile below the earth’s surface. Read David Robinson's story at BuffaloNews.com

New Book about our Local Waterways
Over half of the world’s lakes and estuaries are now too contaminated for fishing and swimming. Even our Great Lakes are not immune to these problems. In her new book, author Margaret Wooster wrote about many such problems, including “a young beluga whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with ten times the level of PCBs in its body than what would qualify as a hazardous waste site by Canadian law.” The book is "Living Waters: Reading the Rivers of the Lower Great Lakes". See Nature Watch by Gerry Rising at BuffaloNews.com